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Alexa GH

[Speech] disconnect homey language settings and alexa / google home

technimantechniman Member
edited April 2018 in Ideas & Suggestions
I just wanted to say I think its a good idea to stop investing too much time in speech recognition,  especially because others can afford to spend more time & money in it.

The thing I'm missing at the moment is the need for homey to be set to the language of the smartspeaker..
I like Homey to respond in dutch in some cases, I don't see the need for homey's language to be set in EN (which means he cannot respond in NL anymore)  

To clarify, I have a flow that checks if my daughter needs to leave for school, 10 before school starts homey mentions this (in NL)
Since I like to be able to control things by voice I linked Alexa to homey, and thus the need sto set the default language to EN

My request would be to have my cake and eat it too 
being able to talk to Alexa (in my case)  and turn on/off/dim devices and such, maybe even have homey respond through alexa (in EN)
and being able to use NL speech in flows.. 

How would I implement something like this,  you ask?      
I suspect Alexa communicates with homey through messages containing strings,  so the most logical solution would probably be a bunch of new flow cards integrated in the homey core ; 
Input : 
Alexa sends something <with tag>
Alexa sends something containing <with tag>

output: 
Alexa respons with  

This should also allow someone to control anything "Alexa set TV to RTL 4" even though this is currently not possible with the Alexa Skills  in the Netherlands  

Please note I've used Alexa but ideally it should read "smartspeaker", in the settings page one could enter the details, selected smartspeaker, account and language.. wouldn't it be awesome if you could use both Alexa and Google Home together ?
Also there needs to be a way to test and validate the received messages, similar to the  "/manager/speech-input"




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Comments

  • swtttswttt Member
    edited March 2018
    The new alexa skill allows to control devices directly (without the ask homey part).
    This means you can keep the language on Homey in Dutch, and just rename the devices from within the Alexa app to the English names.

    Edit: I used the on/off command for tv channels switching. Used HA-bridge for this, but can be achieved using Homey as well. Just create a virtual onoff devices, used the "on" flow card trigger to switch to a certain channel and flip the device back to off. Then say "Alexa, turn on RTL 4" .

  • Thanks i'll give that a try, but don't you think "my" proposal would work better/more intuitive ? 
    something like "Alexa where is techniman"  would be possible (yes I have my location as a variable in homey) 
    or "Alexa, whats the temperature of XYZ" 
  • swtttswttt Member
    Thats more up to Alexa and has nothing to do with Homey (when using direct devices). If Alexa would support sensors and presence information, it wouldnt be hard to integrate i guess.

    The other way is letting Homey parse the information, thats how the old skill works. Not sure if you are able to retrieve the text before its parsing tho. But it might be even possible to do some translation. Ask things on Alexa in English, receive the text on Homey, translate the text and let homey react on the translated.
  • Thats my point Alexa does not support anything besides on/of/dim hence being able to forward this to homey would be awesome. 

     
     

     
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